Playstation’s 20 year anniversary!

Playstation today has reached the legal age in most states and countries world wide. It only seemed like only yesterday I was playing Gran Turismo on a friend’s PlayStation, then getting hooked on to GTA: Vice City on PS2 in the early 2000’s, PS3 age of Call Of Duty reign and now the sleek PS4. Boy time flies.

Playstation’s continued success I felt was the openess of the platform, where as a few Xbox titles sought to be exclusive for the Microsoft platform. Another plus was PSN was free to be accessed by players, contrary to the Xbox experience. This has however changed in recent PS4 days, but there is still an aire of fairness, where value for money is key.

But there is more to Playstation’s longevity than that. Tomb Raider debuted on the new Playstation back in 1996 and catapulted the game and platform to dizzying heights. Also the introduction of the DualShock controller to increase gameplay sensations proved to be a innovative addition to Playstation’s grand experience. Playstation’s blog reminisced “the [DualShock controller vibrations in the] helicopter scenes in the original Metal Gear Solid were particularly impressive”.

It didn’t hurt as well that Sony got in front of their “film storage wars”, something they didn’t do when they fought against the VHS to promote their own Betamax in the 80s / 90s. This time they trojaned a BluRay player in the Playstation so we could enjoy both our games and BluRay films. Neat. At a hefty cost per unit though, but you don’t hear us complaining.

While we toast a cold one to the 20 year old who kept us company through the weekends, long dissertations and study sessions, unemployment and ‘sick days’ off of work, here is to hoping they will continue to surprise and impress us with innovation and uncompromising quality.